The Longmen Grottoes were started when the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534) moved the capital to Luoyang and were continuously built during the 400 years until the Northern Song Dynasty. All the emperors during that period took part in the construction of the grottoes.

The Longmen Grottoes together with Yungang Grottoes, Gansu province, and Mogao Caves, in Datong (we will talk about these ones later on another post), are regarded as the three most famous treasure houses of stone inscriptions in China.

@miguel_discart (Flickr)

The grottoes keep over 100,000 Buddha statues, some of them over 15 metres high, 2,800 inscriptions and 40 pagodas. Each statue shows a different style since different artists made them.

Among the most important grottoes we can find Fengxian, which is the largest of all caves and located on the highest hill, Cave of Ten Thousand Buddhas, which was built in 680 by Empress Wu Zetian, and Binyang, three caves which were started by Wei Dynasty.